Currently reading (Psychiatry)

[dsrtao]

From _Opening Skinner's Box_, Lauren Slater:

He [Rosenhan] said in the next three months he would send an undisclosed number of pseudopatients to this particular hospital, and the staff were to judge, in a sort of experimental reversal, not who was insane, but who was sane. One month passed. Two months passed. At the end of the three months the hospital staff reported to Rosenhan that they had detected with a high degree of confidence forty-one of of Rosenhan's pseudopatients. Rosenhan had, in fact, sent none."

Timeframe: circa 1975.

Comments

[siderea]

This was after Rosenhan's "Being Sane in Insane Places", in which he did the reverse?

[dsrtao]

Yes, it was a direct consequence of publishing. Lots of hospitals wrote in saying that it was a fluke and couldn't happen here.

Around 2003 Slater replicated the "Being Sane" experiment using only herself as the pseudopatient. On the one hand, she wasn't admitted and confined. On the other hand, she was diagnosed with "depression with psychotic features" in almost all of the nine ERs she presented at.

Nevertheless, in the ERs I am seen as such, this despite my denying all symptoms of the disorder -- and I am a prescribed a total of twenty-five antipsychotics and sixty antidepressants. At no point does an interview last longer than twelve and a half minutes, although at most places I needed to wait an average of two and a half hours in the waiting room [...] no one gives me a full mental status exam, which includes more detailed and easily administered tests to indicate the gross disorganization of thinking that almost always accompanies psychosis. Everyone, however, takes my pulse.

Pulse

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Everyone, however, takes my pulse.

Well, yeah; they need to make sure she's not a zombie psychotic.